


dig the dust enclosed here

by Emamel



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Body snatching, Crack Treated Seriously, Developing Friendships, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia's Sense of Humor, Mentioned Essi Daven, Mentioned Priscilla, far too seriously, grave robbing, loosely based on Burke and Hare, which should give you some idea of the tone of this thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:27:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27839860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emamel/pseuds/Emamel
Summary: “I can assure you that this isn’t what it looks like, my good man,” he calls, pointedly ignoring the cheap casket at his feet which proves that this very much is exactly what it looks like. Perhaps he can argue that he’s a gravedigger - it seems like the sort of thing that really ought to be done at night, if you ask him. Which, of course, the man behind him does not.“Looks like you’re digging up a grave.”There aren’t many arguments Jaskier can make to refute that, as digging up a grave is precisely what he’s doing; but that certainly doesn’t mean he isn’t going to give it a damn good go.“Well you see, you’re already working from a faulty supposition; if you look closer you’ll see that I’m merely… Merely…”The words trail off and stick in his throat as he turns. Even if the white hair and slit-pupiled eyes left him in any doubt of the man’s identity, the medallion he can just about make out on his chest would be enough to confirm it.He isn’t a man at all - he’s a witcher, which means there’s a good chance that Jaskier is very, very dead. More dead, perhaps, than the poor sod in the casket at his feet. At least she’s all in one piece.Probably.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Shani, Jaskier | Dandelion & Shani
Comments: 58
Kudos: 241





	dig the dust enclosed here

**Author's Note:**

> This is absolutely one of the dumbest things I've ever written, and I'm using the excuse that I'm getting back into the swing of writing Geralt and Jaskier's dynamic in something relatively low-stakes, by which I mean, yes I am still working on my other fics, but I needed this out of my system.
> 
> Lots of discussions of death, and abstract mentions of dissection and corpses, though not in any detail.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

It’s a flat voice; the sort of voice, Jaskier thinks, that is perfectly used to getting its own way without the need for volume or menace or inflection of any kind. It is also the sort of voice that is absolutely prepared to use all of those things if required - and Jaskier would know. He’s something of an expert when it comes to the qualities inherent in a voice.

A moment passes, in which Jaskier holds himself very, very still, and hopes that the owner of the voice had somehow been speaking to someone else in the utterly abandoned cemetery at three bells past midnight. It’s a slim hope - vanishingly small, the sort of chance that not even Jaskier would risk putting money on, the sort of chance that not even  _ Essi _ would risk putting money on - but it’s all he has. He really, really can’t afford to be caught.

Literally. The fine alone would wipe out the paltry savings he’s managed to scrounge in the past few months. His business may be a relatively lucrative one but he’s still new to it; and more importantly, he’s still in a great deal more debt than he likes to think on.

And that’s _ before _ he considers the time he might have to spend in a cell.

“Hey.” 

The voice is closer now, and Jaskier slumps over his shovel in something like resignation. Well. He always knew it would come to this one day.

There’s a very particular posture that Jaskier had had beaten into him as far back as he can remember, and he settles into it like an old coat - one that is comforting in its familiarity, but just a little too tight in all the wrong places, and pinches more than it ought. He shoulders drop, his chin tilts back in what could be arrogance as easily as it could be confidence. His hip juts to the side, and a smile begins to pull his mouth wide as he turns on his heel. It would be pointless to try to run, and so really, talking his way out of the situation is the only solution he has left.

Or - he could always hit the newcomer over the head with his shovel, but that feels like something of an unpleasant last resort.

“I can assure you that this isn’t what it looks like, my good man,” he calls, pointedly ignoring the cheap casket at his feet which proves that this very much is exactly what it looks like. Perhaps he can argue that he’s a gravedigger - it seems like the sort of thing that really ought to be done at night, if you ask him. Which, of course, the man behind him does not.

“Looks like you’re digging up a grave.”

There aren’t many arguments Jaskier can make to refute that, as digging up a grave is precisely what he’s doing; but that certainly doesn’t mean he isn’t going to give it a damn good go.

“Well you see, you’re already working from a faulty supposition; if you look closer you’ll see that I’m merely… Merely…”

The words trail off and stick in his throat as he turns. For a start, the man is far closer than he had anticipated; close enough that Jaskier is surprised he can’t feel the warmth of his skin given how cold the night air is. His breath mists between them, obscuring his view for the briefest moment, before the wind catches it up out of the way, and his companion is revealed by the sickly moon and the sputtering light of Jaskier’s lantern, almost out of oil.

Jaskier can certainly see why he wouldn’t need to raise his voice to get his point across - the man is built rather like the broad side of a barn. Jaskier has to squint to see where his armour ends and the dark night around him begins, but even so, he can see that the man is blessed across the shoulders. It isn’t enough to hold Jaskier’s attention, though, not when his face and hair are as pale as his clothing is dark. Throat suddenly far drier than it was a moment ago, Jaskier swallows hard. Even if the white hair and slit-pupiled eyes left him in any doubt of the man’s identity, the medallion he can just about make out on his chest would be enough to confirm it.

He isn’t a man at all - he’s a  _ witcher,  _ which means there’s a good chance that Jaskier is very, very dead. More dead, perhaps, than the poor fucker in the casket at his feet. At least she’s all in one piece.

Probably.

“Ah," he says, which is really something of a let down. His rhetoric professor would be so disappointed - something that has never bothered him before this precise moment, and has, in fact, been a particular spiteful motivation of his on many a late night. But - witty rejoinder aside - Jaskier knows very well that he has to say something. Something to distract the witcher, something to wipe the scowl from his face and hopefully buy Jaskier enough time to, if not run away, then at least find some way to redirect his ire.

“Come here often?” Jaskier asks, and immediately resigns himself to his bloody fate.

By some miracle, though, the witcher doesn’t immediately draw his sword and cut him down. Possibly he’s waiting for the perfect moment to put Jaskier out of his misery - and really, at this rate, that moment can’t come quick enough - but Jaskier can’t help but think that’s not it. The twist of the witcher’s mouth is unimpressed, disdainful, disgusted, a thousand and one things and not a single one of them murderous.

“You shouldn’t be here,” the witcher says again, and Jaskier plasters a broad smile across his face to hide the instinctive flinch. He’s quite aware that he shouldn’t be here, thank you  _ very  _ much.

“I’m not sure we’ve got the time to get ourselves into a philosophical debate on the nature of whether or not there’s anywhere I  _ should _ be at any given moment,” he says, and allows a petty thrill of pleasure to twist in his chest at the way the witcher’s brows furrow. “Suffice it to say that wherever I choose to be is where I  _ should _ be, and where I  _ should _ be right now is finishing what I was doing, rather than standing here and having this frankly fascinating chat with you. So, good witcher, kind witcher; if you’ll allow me to conclude my business, I’ll be out of your hair - and what fine hair it is, may I add, really, just lovely - and we can both get on with our -  _ shit!” _

There’s nowhere for Jaskier to back away to unless he fancies falling into the open grave, but he can’t help the way he tilts backwards as the witcher lurches forward, nose almost close enough to Jaskier’s neck to brush the skin. He gulps, which really does nothing to rectify the situation; and does, in fact, put the delicate veins of his throat within easier reach of the witcher’s teeth.

Jaskier can’t be sure, but he thinks he might be whimpering, just a little.

But - as suddenly as he was there, the witcher is gone again, three paces back with his brow furrowed so deep that it puts every grave Jaskier has ever dug up to shame. The distance makes him feel a little better, though he knows it isn’t logical; after all, he’s just seen all the evidence he needs of how quickly the witcher can move should the mood strike him.

“You’re the one disturbing the graves,” the witcher says. His eyes flash in the low light as he studies Jaskier.

“Well  _ yes _ I suppose so, but hah, this really doesn’t seem like the sort of business a witcher would be interested in, coin or no coin. As you can see, no one’s being hurt, and really, I think it would be in everyone’s best interests if we could just, ah, get on with our lives in peace and relative comfort; preferably far, far away from one another.”

In a stunning display of bull-headedness, the witcher ignores every word out of Jaskier’s mouth in favour of tilting his head slowly to one side and quickly licking his lips. It puts Jaskier in mind of nothing so much as a snake tasting the air.

“You’re human,” the witcher says; it’s no wonder the man is a monster hunter, given his finely-honed and hard-won observation skills. With some difficulty, Jaskier swallows back every quick reply that leaps to his tongue. They stick in his throat and he coughs a little, doing his utmost to ignore the way the witcher’s eyes leap to track the movement. It’s unsettling, to say the least.

“Last I checked,” Jaskier says, harsher than he’d intended - his heart is still pounding, and he’s sweating from both fear and exertion, and he really needs to get back to work if he wants to be done and out of here before dawn. No-one has yet gone so far as to hire guards for the old cemetery - assuming, of course, that that  _ isn’t _ why the witcher is here - but the streets will begin to flood with people with the rising sun. And though the good people of Oxenfurt have seen all manner of strange things, Jaskier still can’t help but think that he may struggle to explain just why he’s traipsing around the streets with a freshly unearthed corpse.

The witcher blinks.

“Was that recently?” He asks, and Jaskier manages to choke and splutter his way to a half-coherent reply before he notices the slow twitch at the corner of the witcher’s mouth. As though he’s fighting back a smile. As though he’s  _ joking. _

Jaskier’s eyes narrow. Of all the  _ low down, dirty - _

“And no,” the witcher says, pulling Jaskier up short. He’s looking away again, eyes darting across the headstones as though he’s looking for something in particular, and is rather frustrated that he can’t find it. “I don’t come here often.”

“So of course you’d have to choose _tonight_ to come exploring.” It’s barely more than a thought, Jaskier says it so quietly, but with the way the witcher’s head jerks back towards him, he knows that he must have somehow heard. Possessed by the sort of nervous energy that Jaskier is sure must make him unbearable during exams he begins to pace, shovel digging sharply into the ground with every other step.

Of course the witcher would be here  _ tonight _ of all nights; the first time Jaskier has been back for almost a week, the first time the ground has been soft enough, and a body fresh enough, and Shani desperate enough to knock on his door and ask for his help.

Jaskier knows very little about witchers - less even, perhaps, than the population as a whole. What little he does know can be summed up in a scant few sentences; that they hunt monsters. That they are not human - are perhaps monsters themselves, depending on who is telling the story. That they do not feel as humans do; and, of course, that they care for nothing besides themselves and coin.

It should make the situation an easy one to escape - any man who cares more for coin that morality would turn a blind eye to Jaskier if offered enough incentive.

It should be easy -  _ would _ be easy, if Jaskier had two orens to rub together. That he doesn’t is a large part of the reason he’s in this mess at all. But, he tells himself - the witcher doesn’t know that. And while it is likely dangerous - perhaps even lethal - to lie to him, Jaskier reasons that that will be a problem he can deal with later. If he does nothing, then there is every chance he will be caught, and fined, and when he doesn’t have the money to pay the fine, sentenced to spend a month or two languishing in a gaol cell and supposedly considering his life choices.

Which, to a free spirit like himself, may very well be lethal. He’d rather not take the chance.

“Whatever you’ve been offered to be here tonight, I’ll double it in exchange for you walking away now as though you were never even here,” Jaskier says, and prays desperately that witchers can’t sniff out lies the way they can apparently sniff out humans.

There’s that slow head tilt again; the one that Jaskier is quickly coming to despise, because it surely can’t mean anything good for him.

“Two favours,” the witcher says flatly. 

“What?” Jaskier asks, now beginning to tip over the boundary of desperate fear into downright anger. The man is being obtuse on purpose - he must be. And still the time is trickling away, and Jaskier is no closer to escaping into the night with his prize. He can feel the money Shani promised him slipping further and further from his reach.

“I’m working tonight in return for a favour from a friend. Are you offering me two favours in her place?” Jaskier stares in mute horror, watching the witcher’s mouth and hoping - more than he thinks he’s ever hoped for anything before - that it will twitch again and betray that he’s joking still. A cruel trick indeed, but still better than the alternative.

Because what sort of person holds that much sway over a witcher - to have him call them a friend, and exchange favours with him like it’s nothing? What hope does Jaskier have of finding something to offer him that’s better than whatever his friend can give?

“Done!” His traitorous mouth says before he has a chance to wrangle it into submission.

The witcher huffs a breath that, had it come from anyone else - anyone at all! - Jaskier might have been able to mistake for a laugh. As it is, he thinks perhaps the witcher has an injury he can’t see in the dark, and one of his lungs has just collapsed. Which would, now that he thinks about it, solve both his problems at once. He’s certain none of the medical students have ever had the chance to study a witcher before, and the sheer novelty of it might even be enough to earn him a little extra. 

"I refuse," the witcher says; Jaskier rears back, shaking his head wildly.

That isn't right - witchers aren't supposed to just  _ refuse _ payment, even Jaskier knows that! Just who does this arrogant, moronic, insufferably stubborn  _ cockstain _ think he is, going around -

"And you should leave," the witcher carries on, apparently oblivious to the veritable eruption that is about to take place before his very eyes. "Now."

Jaskier - never one to do as he's told simply because he's been told to do it - plants his feet, drives his shovel into the ground so that it stands upright of its own accord, and crosses his arms over his chest. Then, feeling that he perhaps isn't getting his point across quite well enough yet, fixes a scowl upon his face that would rival even Professor Kerran's.

The witcher seems distinctly unimpressed - no, worse. The witcher doesn't appear to notice his efforts.

"You surely can't expect me to leave now, I'm at a crucial moment in tonight's work!" Jaskier cries, aware that he is being entirely too loud and equally aware that he's unlikely to get any quieter whilst the witcher is so intent on ignoring him. Those unsettling eyes don't deign to stop their slow sweep of the area, but the witcher nevertheless raises a brow.

"A crucial moment in your grave-robbing? I hate to tell you this, but they'll still be here tomorrow."

Oh, spare him from witchers that think they're clever - or worse, funny.

"Yes, and with guards and a reinforced casket at the very least," Jaskier says from between his teeth. "And as I've already told you - quite clearly, I may add - this  _ isn't what it looks like." _

"Really." The witcher's voice is flat enough that it could be mistaken for Valdo's attempts at a baritone. "Looks like there's an open grave there -" he juts his chin towards the hole in the ground that is now several feet behind Jaskier "- a dead body there -" here, he tilts his head towards the wooden box that sits abandoned by the side of the grave "- and an idiot human instead of the ghouls I was hired to kill."

"Gho- I'm sorry, did you say  _ ghoul?"  _ Jaskier's voice squeaks enough that it could be mistaken for Valdo's attempts at a falsetto.

He'd known that it wouldn't be long before people stopped turning a bit of a blind eye to his activities - he just hadn't expected to attract the attention of a  _ witcher _ of all things. While what he is doing is, yes,  _ technically  _ illegal, it is also mostly harmless and - more importantly! - in the service of a greater good.

At least, that was how he had pitched the idea to Shani when it first occurred to him several months ago.

At the time, though they had met on several occasions through mutual acquaintances, Jaskier wouldn’t really have described them as friends. She was pleasant enough company, however, and an excellent drinking partner - a requirement amongst the older medical students, she claimed - and so Jaskier had thrown himself down into the seat beside her after being abandoned by Priscilla in favour of a lovely young lady in a startlingly green dress.

The hours had slipped by with alarming ease, until the faintest hint of daylight found them sat on the edge of the docks passing a bottle back and forth and contemplating the decisions that had led them there.

In Jaskier’s case, they were actually rather straightforward, in that he hadn’t made a great many decisions of his own before coming to Oxenfurt, at which point he had immediately started to make up for lost time and never really stopped. A noble’s birth had led naturally to a noble’s education, which had pushed him towards the seven liberal arts and he hadn’t cared much to argue. Three years later had seen him with a passion for learning, and for music in particular, that he had frankly never expected, and that he had known he wouldn’t be able to indulge should he return to the family’s estate to take on his duties as the eldest son.

So - he hadn’t. And for a while, that had been that. Life continued as it had for the previous few years, and there had been a blossoming hope in his chest that perhaps this truly was it - that his life could revolve around poetry and songs for as long as he chose, and that he had the support, if not the approval, of his family.

That dream was swiftly torn to shreds, cast furiously into the fireplace, and set alight with extreme prejudice with the arrival of one letter. A letter that Jaskier had, fittingly enough, torn swiftly to shreds, cast furiously into the fireplace of the student common room, and set alight with extreme prejudice.

He had been cut off - from his inheritance and stipend both, unless he consented to return to Lettenhove and begin taking on some of his father’s responsibilities. Something that he had known, from the tender age of far-too-young, that he would be ill-suited for. He had begged - had beseeched, had argued, had wheedled, and sworn, and cursed them to understand that his cousin (or indeed, any of his sisters) would be a better fit for the job to no avail. They had been adamant, and Jaskier had been left caught between a stuffy rock and a poverty-stricken hard place.

The fees for his tuition had already been long paid off, but that did little to help in the day-to-day costs of living he hadn’t previously paid a great deal of attention to. And, as it turned out, there weren’t that many folk in Oxenfurt interested in hearing the songs of a young and untested recent graduate, no matter how sublime his voice or how groundbreaking and transcendent his lyrics.

All of this had come together to create the perfect storm of a situation he then found himself in - drinking away what little savings he still had side-by-side with Shani, the bellowing of the dockworkers a strangely melodic dawn chorus. Maybe he could find a way to work it into a song.

Shani, meanwhile, had been preoccupied by troubles of a very different nature, and it had taken a fair amount of coaxing from Jaskier before she would divulge them. The medical school, she explained, was struggling. There was a certain demand, she said glancing carefully around, and a very limited supply. Unrepentantly curious, Jaskier had leaned so far forward he had almost toppled into the water. They were falling behind the Zerrikanian and Nilfgaardian schools, she said, mouth pressing into a line so thin it almost disappeared, and all because of the ridiculous laws around dissection. How were students of the medical sciences supposed to learn anatomy if there were never given the opportunity to  _ study anatomy? _

Not knowing in the slightest what she was talking about, but nonetheless fascinated, Jaskier had nodded along in the hopes she would keep talking, and kept all jokes on the subject of  _ studying anatomy _ wisely to himself.

The laws, as it happened, were as followed: the medical school of Oxenfurt University was permitted to teach the subject and study of anatomy using human specimens and samples only under extremely specific circumstances. Circumstances so extremely specific, as it happened, that Shani had witnessed a mere two dissections in her time as an undergraduate. She had entered into her final years of study with a better idea of the musculature of a cow simply from time spent at the butcher's than she did of the human form.

Jaskier had frowned, tapped his fingers, enquired as to the extremely specific circumstances in which a corpse might find its way onto the table in an Oxenfurt lecture hall, and immediately regretted it. Shani took great delight in detailing the sorts of crimes that would lead a person to not only execution, but also the apparent humiliation and public shame of having their body examined for science.

And Jaskier had frowned some more, tapped his fingers faster, and said  _ wait hang on, what's so shameful about that?  _

Shani had confessed to not knowing, and for a time, the conversation drifted away from the topic. That might even have been that, had Jaskier not flopped onto his back in a fit of dizziness, glanced behind them towards the row of ramshackle houses, and caught sight of a small trowel buried deep in the soil of a window box. He'd sat up so fast Shani had to clutch at his waist to stop him overbalancing into the water.

_ What's the punishment for the university if they don't get the bodies from these official sources?  _ He had asked Shani; not quite seeing where he was going with this, she had only shrugged loosely. As far as she knew, it had never been an issue, and so there had been no definite consequences written into the law.

Which, to Jaskier, sounded a great deal like  _ breaking _ it would result in barely more than a slap on the wrist. Practically legal, if you asked him.

The punishment for body snatching, on the other hand, was a great deal stricter - but, Jaskier reasoned a few days later as he counted out the coins from his first…  _ acquisition,  _ well worth the risk. After all, no-one from the medical school would even consider turning him over to the authorities; and as time went on, he could only come to the conclusion that even the authorities were willing to turn a bit of a blind eye when the reputation of the school was on the line. 

Why wouldn’t they, after all? There were any number of other crimes for them to preoccupy themselves with - crimes that were a great deal more violent, and public, and (more importantly) the solving of which was more likely to result in a reward of either money or adulation.

It was, he gloated to Shani only a few short months ago, a perfect solution to both of their woes. 

And now he's here - caught with hands that are red from both chafing and guilt by a witcher that had apparently been under the mistaken impression that it was a ghoul that's been running around Oxenfurt's cemeteries to pilfer the recently dead.

"No," says the witcher, and Jaskier has just enough time to drag in a relieved gasp of air before he finishes, "I said ghouls. Plural."

"You - I am not going to stand here and argue semantics with you when there's a chance there are man-eating beasts on the prowl, witcher!"

"Corpse eating," the witcher corrects absently, drifting away from the conversation on silent feet. "Usually live humans are too much fuss when there are bodies around. Less likely to put up a fight." Jaskier tries to watch him go, but the flickering circle of light from his lantern doesn’t do much to penetrate the gloomy night, and he quickly loses track of just where the witcher might be. It should probably be more unsettling than it is.

“Oh, what a relief, that a ghoul would usually rather eat a corpse than me! Well that’s fantastic, thank you so much for your reassurances, I’m certain I’ll sleep much better now knowing that,” Jaskier says, and tries not to jump when he catches a flash of those eyes in the dark. Would a ghoul’s eyes catch the light like that as well? He doesn’t want to ask the witcher, doesn’t want to let on that he’s thinking so hard about the possible dangers of being here after he’s already been warned to leave, but the image won’t leave his mind.

“Wouldn’t be a problem if you weren’t spending your nights in a graveyard,” the witcher points out, and it’s a close enough mirror to Jaskier’s own thoughts that irrational anger begins to bubble in his chest.

“Yes, well, unfortunately I seem to be stuck in a city that is utterly determined not to recognise the talent that is slowly languishing within its boundaries, and so I’m forced to seek alternate employment. I might have thought a witcher, of all people, would be sympathetic.”

The sudden hissed breath from behind him tells him that he’s touched a nerve - the urge to apologise is abrupt, and almost overwhelming, and not only out of a sense of self-preservation. He… He feels  _ bad,  _ knowing that he’s offended the witcher. Despite his frankly appalling sense of humour, and his intimidating manner, and the odd smell that clung to him even over the heavy scent of freshly-dug earth and gently rotting corpse, he really hadn’t done anything to deserve having Jaskier’s frustrations taken out on him.

“Shit,” the witcher snarls, from somewhere to Jaskier’s left - and hang on, how had he moved so quickly? Although the witcher’s movements are almost silent, Jaskier’s sure that he must have passed within a few feet of him to have gotten there so fast - which would have forced him to move right through Jaskier’s pale circle of light. There’s no possible way he could have missed that.

The hiss sounds behind him again, and every one of Jaskier’s muscles locks tight in immediate terror.

Maybe the witcher had been too distracted by their conversation, or maybe Jaskier was just loud enough to mask the sounds of a ghoul dragging its misshapen form through the long grass, but it doesn’t matter much either way. Whatever the reason, neither of them had realised just how much danger they were truly in until Jaskier found himself paralysed by fear and possibly about to end up as the first course in the ghoul’s nightly meal.

The moment stretches on impossibly long, and the ghoul’s next breath sounds like a death rattle; it’s close enough to Jaskier that he knows the only thing he can do is squeeze his eyes shut and hope that his death will be, if not painless, then at the very least quick. Perhaps it will chew his throat open, or go straight for his beating heart - he doesn’t much fancy the drawn-out death that will come if it aims for something a little less central. He may not have been a saint, but he thinks he’s been a good enough person that that isn’t too much to ask for.

There’s a wet thud followed swiftly by a shriek; Jaskier sucks in a deep breath, and another, and then another for good measure, which is rather confusing given that he ought to be dead by now. Or, if not dead, then at least in some mildly excruciating agony.

Unless he’s dead already and hasn’t yet noticed, in which case he’d really like to have a stern word with whichever pox-ridden excuse of a god thought that  _ this _ could be considered a suitable afterlife. So far, it feels exactly like being alive, and Jaskier is rather closer to shitting himself in fear than he thinks is really fair for a dead person to be. 

He risks opening one eye, and is immediately shoved back onto the casket by the witcher’s bulk as he hurtles past Jaskier towards the ghoul. The ghoul which is, currently, oozing a black, viscous fluid from the knife wound in its chest.

At least that explained the  _ thud. _

The casket gives way beneath his weight and the wood splinters beneath his hands as Jaskier tries to scrabble backwards, not quite daring to take his eyes off the fight.  _ So much for corpse-eater, _ he thinks wildly as the ghoul sinks its teeth into the witcher’s shoulder where the leather armour must be worn thin with time and use, forcing a harsh grunt of pain from the man. He’s a blur of motion as he twists in its grip and shoves it away, and even at this distance, Jaskier can see that it takes a piece of his shoulder with it. His stomach roils with the imagined pain, but the witcher hardly seems to falter as he draws his sword.

From deep within the inky night, there is a second hiss.

“Witcher!” Jaskier manages to gasp around vocal chords that are so strained by terror they may never be the same again. “Witcher, there’s another!”

There’s no response from the witcher, but he pivots on his heel with the sort of easy grace that would have made Jaskier’s old dancing  _ and _ fencing instructors fall to their knees in rapturous wonder. His sword flashes, mirrored by the twin flares of his eyes, and the newcomer is cut down with barely a thought. 

The first ghoul - perhaps realising that it is devastatingly outmatched, perhaps sensing that there is far easier prey to be found, or perhaps reacting with a simple animal instinct now that the witcher has briefly turned his back to it - opens its mouth far wider than any mouth that is vaguely human-shaped should be able to, and screams at the witcher before trying to flee. Right towards Jaskier, who has only a partially-destroyed coffin and a scant few feet of distance separating him from certain, ghouly death.

A partially destroyed coffin, a scant few feet of distance, and apparently one very determined witcher.

The sound of a sword sinking deep into the pitted flesh of a ghoul isn’t one that Jaskier thinks he’ll ever forget - it will haunt his nightmares for as long as he lives, and possibly also his daymares, and his dawnmares, and his afternoonmares, and -

There's a chance he might be a touch hysterical.

The witcher doesn’t notice, as he’s far too invested in swinging his sword again; this time hard enough to finish the job of separating the ghoul’s bloated head from its skeletal body. Jaskier would probably be sick if he could draw in a deep enough breath to retch.

Everything is still and unnervingly quiet for a few long seconds after that. Despite the fierce pounding of Jaskier’s heart, and the blood roaring in his ears, the night itself is silent enough that the sound of the witcher’s sword hitting the ground is enough to make him leap almost out of his skin.

“Oh,” Jaskier says faintly, and then -

“Fuck,” the witcher says, before his knees buckle, and he topples to the ground beside his sword.

  
  
  
  


Jaskier would like to state for the record - if he should ever be caught, that is, which isn’t something he’s planning on, but  _ is _ looking increasingly likely as dawn drags itself wearily closer - that while he may not be perfect, he certainly has done nothing to deserve  _ this. _

_ This _ being a witcher that is entirely too low on blood to move around under his own power, loaded onto the cart that Jaskier had originally intended for a far less grumbly passenger, dripping a steady trail of inky blood along the cobbled streets of Oxenfurt, several hours before dawn, all without being noticed by either residents or militia. There aren’t many people that Jaskier would wish this fate upon, and all of them are guilty of far more heinous acts than he.

He makes certain to tell the irate witcher this as he finally makes the turn onto Shani’s street. It’s lucky, he muses, that she no longer lives in the dormitories of the medical students, or their task would be an impossible one. So impossible, in fact, that Jaskier would likely have left the witcher to bleed to death in the graveyard with only the faintest stirrings of guilt to disturb his dreams that night.

That part he keeps to himself - he doesn’t think the witcher would appreciate hearing it. Besides, it’s all merely conjecture; Shani  _ does _ have her own lodgings, and the road  _ is _ empty when they turn onto it, and the witcher  _ isn’t _ bleeding to death while Jaskier steals away into the night with a cadaver that he’s planning to sell for a tidy sum. Why, then, would Jaskier bother the witcher with such a morbid line of thinking, when the man so clearly has bigger and bloodier concerns to be concerning himself with. Concernedly.

“There’s no way I’m going to have time to get back to the cemetery  _ and _ return here before the streets start filling,” Jaskier finds himself muttering anyway; his voice is so low it gets lost beneath the rattle of wheels, but if the way the witcher’s grunts shift ever so slightly in pitch is any indication, it still isn’t low enough to escape his hearing.

“Well Shani is most certainly going to murder me, so I suppose at least  _ she’ll _ get something out of this whole clusterfuck of an evening,” he continues, a little louder now that he knows there’s no point trying to spare the witcher his musings. It perhaps isn’t the most dignified end he can imagine - certainly not what he’d envisioned for himself when he’d first set out to make his way in the world years ago - but a better death than he thinks he’s likely to get anywhere else, with the way he carries on. 

The witcher grunts again, and the cart wobbles dangerously in Jaskier’s hands, almost hard enough to send them all tumbling arse over tit. Jaskier whips around, an admonishment to  _ lie still for fuck’s sake _ ready on his tongue, when he realises that the witcher is trying to lever himself to his feet. What little colour had remained in his skin has long since drained away along with the frankly alarming volume of blood he’s lost, leaving him a shade of grey that Jaskier's only ever seen on a corpse. His eyes flit wildly from side to side, and his breath is so shallow and rapid that Jaskier might describe it as panting, if he were calm enough to describe it as anything at all. Which he isn’t, as it happens.

“What are - what the  _ fuck,  _ sit back down before you fall down and ruin all my good work!” he cries, dropping the handles of the cart to shove ineffectually at the witcher’s good shoulder. It doesn’t achieve his aim of moving the witcher back, although he does sway a little. Even his lips are stark white where they’re pressed together in pain and -

Resignation?

“I’ll go,” the witcher mutters from behind his teeth, looking everywhere but at Jaskier. “Collect my payment. Won’t - impose.”

_ Oh.  _ Well that’s - certainly not what Jaskier was expecting. Anger, perhaps, at Jaskier for getting in the way of his hunt, or a stubborn insistence that he doesn’t require the help of a human. Possibly even a reluctance to be treated by someone that he doesn’t already know and trust - Jaskier’s heard that witchers are a secretive bunch, and it wouldn’t have been too much of a stretch to believe that this one wouldn’t want to go around blithely sharing the secrets of his kind.

The idea that the witcher might think he’s somehow imposing upon him wouldn’t have crossed his mind in a thousand years. After all, it could hardly be called imposing when Jaskier had been the one to drag the witcher out of the cemetery despite the teeth being bared in his general direction. 

It also couldn’t really be called _ imposing  _ when it’s largely Jaskier’s fault that he’s even here at all.

The thing is, you see, that Jaskier isn’t a fool. He plays one well enough, and it’s true that he has more than his fair share of foolish moments and impulses, but these things do not necessarily a fool make. The witcher has dropped enough hints, and Jaskier is skilled enough at reading between the lines to know that there is a very good chance that the ghoul would never have shown up if he hadn’t been going around digging up graves and providing a veritable buffet for them. Really, in retrospect, it’s actually something of a surprise that he hadn’t managed to attract corpse-eaters sooner.

“Look, if it matters that much to you, you can pay us back,” Jaskier says, frustration pulling his voice tight. The witcher watches him, tries to take a step away, and nearly ends up flat on his back when his legs don’t want to support his weight the way he’s clearly used to. It’s a good job Jaskier had thought to stow his swords in the cart, or their added weight may have been enough to tip the scales in gravity’s favour.

Instead the witcher manages to regain his footing and draw himself up to his full height - barely taller than Jaskier, and isn’t that something? - in time for Shani’s door to be thrown open so quickly that Jaskier’s shocked it doesn’t fly right off its hinges.

Shani takes in the scene with the flatly unimpressed look of a woman who has had far too little sleep, and far too much recent exposure to Jaskier.

“This one’s a bit premature, don’t you think,” she says. It isn’t a question.

The witcher eyes her with a great deal more suspicion than Jaskier thinks a man so close to fainting ought to be able to muster. He bares his teeth, though it isn’t clear if it’s meant to be a threat, or if it's from the sudden wave of pain and dizziness that seems to overtake him. Jaskier darts forward just as he begins to list sideways, and manages to worm his way under his arm to offer his support.

“Look, I know I don’t have the, uh,  _ specimen _ you asked for, but I swear to you there were extenuating circumstances,” Jaskier says, hauling the witcher forward and off the street. It’s lucky that he is either delirious with the blood loss, or has finally recognised Jaskier’s brilliance, because he knows full well that there is no way he’d ever be able to force the man to move if he really didn’t want to be moved.

"I can see that," Shani says, shutting the door quickly behind them and darting past as Jaskier struggles to redistribute the witcher's weight across his shoulders. He follows her fading footsteps down the narrow hall towards the room that serves as her study and dining room, and occasionally kitchen when she can't be bothered to move too far from her work. The layout of her house is such that it appears complicated on first glance, much like most of the buildings in this part of the city - Jaskier isn't convinced that any of them were designed with real living people in mind - but he navigates the sharp corner with the ease of long practice, even with the witcher staggering at his side.

Ahead of them, Shani has already cleared her workbench of notes and diagrams, the parchments meticulously organised in a system that no-one on the Continent but her has a hope of understanding. She stacks them to one side, and Jaskier makes a mental note not to even breathe in their direction. If he knocks a single sheet out of place, what she’ll do to him will make the witcher's wound look like nothing more than a pinprick.

The witcher slumps his way up onto the table, and doesn’t even hiss at Shani when she tugs the collar of his shirt to the side to better see the wound. It has stopped bleeding, and Jaskier thanks every god he can name, and quite a few he can’t for  _ that _ . Perhaps it’s a witcher thing, or perhaps Jaskier just doesn’t know as much about how much blood a man can lose as he thought he did, but he suspects that any normal human wouldn’t have survived the trip.

Of course, any normal human wouldn’t have survived the fight, but that’s neither here nor there, he thinks.

“Can you get this off?” Shani asks, her voice far gentler than Jaskier has ever had aimed at him. She tugs carefully at the hem of the witcher’s shirt; he grunts in lieu of a real answer, and shrugs it over his head with a poorly-disguised wince. Jaskier knows that Shani notices - if  _ he _ has, then there’s no possibility  _ she _ missed it - but she doesn’t comment on it. Instead, she watches him shrewdly for a moment, before turning to grab a bottle that looks suspiciously familiar. After a few seconds of squinting at it, Jaskier concludes that it’s the same stuff the first and second years used to pass around under the desks in Professor Stepjan’s astronomy lectures. He’d known a couple of students that swore it could leave you blind, and he’d always scoffed that they just didn’t have the constitution for it.

He swallows heavily and pushes the thought aside.

Shani cleans her hands meticulously, and the witcher works his jaw while refusing to look at either of them. He’s so tense that Jaskier's muscles start to ache just looking at him.

“Jaskier, bandages,” Shani says, distractedly efficient as she so often is, and he leaps at the chance to move, to do something other than stand and stare at the patchwork of knotted scars across the witcher’s bare chest. There are some that are too jagged to identify, but there are several that Jaskier can recognise as teethmarks - unevenly spaced and so deep that he suspects the creature took a chunk of muscle for its troubles.

The layout of Shani’s house is best described in terms of the organised chaos of mages - and there is, Jaskier reflects, a certain magic in what she does. Everything has its place, and nothing is out of place, and he has never -  _ will  _ never - understood how she chooses what goes where. But he is by now long familiar with the intricacies of her system, even if he can’t unravel it, so it is the work of moments to find her silver box of clean bandages. Unadorned and smaller than she would have liked, it was still the first thing Jaskier had bought her with money that he had earned for himself, and so she kept it in place of the somewhat lovelier copper box she had used before.

By the time he makes it back to her side, she has already set a kettle over the fireplace, and seems to be arguing with the witcher about the necessity of treating the wound  _ before  _ it begins to fester and eat away at the healthy surrounding tissue.

Jaskier could tell him that it’s a fight he is destined to lose, but he doesn’t imagine the witcher takes too kindly to being told that a confrontation is hopeless. Besides, he then risks focusing both their ires on him, which is something he’d really rather avoid.

As far as he can tell, the witcher seems to think that because the wound hasn’t yet killed him, then the odds are favourable that it won’t do so before it has a chance to heal. Currently they're sniping back and forth something about intentions, which Jaskier can only assume doesn't mean what he thinks it means. 

Not knowing what else to do, he tunes them out in favour of studying the witcher as surreptitiously as he knows how, and quickly realises that although Shani has already forgotten more about the human body than Jaskier will ever know, the witcher likely knows his own limits better than she does. There are scars that twist his flesh so viciously that Jaskier is certain the wounds would have killed an unmutated man. Even the bite at the junction of his shoulder, less than an hour old, looks as though it has been healing for days by the time Shani finally convinces him to let her wipe away the dried blood.

Admittedly he’s only agreed on the condition that she then not be allowed near him with the sweet herbs she’s been gathering, but Shani is one to pick her battles wisely, and so concedes with grace.

The witcher is clearly one to pick his battles wisely too, because he waits until her back is turned to pull a small bottle from the pouch at his hip. He tugs the cork free with his teeth, spits it into his palm, and downs the contents before Jaskier has a chance to open his mouth and ask ‘what the fuck is that?’

“What the fuck is that?” He asks anyway, because as his dear, disowned mother always said;  _ better late than never. _

Shani spins around and snatches the bottle from his hand with a speed and ferocity that leaves even the witcher stunned. His pupils expand so suddenly in response to the perceived threat that for a moment they seem to overtake his iris, leaving them a circle of flat black. Jaskier shivers, though those eyes don’t for a moment waver from Shani.

For her part, she merely takes a couple of cautious sniffs and promptly drops the bottle.

This would be more concerning, were it not for the absolutely disgusted expression on her face, and the slight twitch at the corner of the witcher’s mouth that is already becoming so familiar. A cruel joke to play on her, maybe, but a harmless one. She scrubs her hands over her face as though that will work to rid her nose of whatever foul-smelling concoction the witcher had downed without a moment’s hesitation

“It smells like  _ death!” _ Shani says, staring with equal disdain and despair at the smashed glass on her floor. Deciding for once to make himself useful, Jaskier sets about unearthing her pan and brush and sweeping away the mess. He’ll never hear the end of it if she later kneels down to look for something and gets a piece stuck in her leg.

“It is. For a human,” the witcher says, far more agreeable than he has been all night.

“Then why did you  _ drink _ it?” Jaskier asks. He should be more horrified, some distant part of him notes, but that part is easily buried; smothered beneath the grave dirt of his fascination.

“I’m not human.” The witcher doesn’t seem inclined to elaborate, and Jaskier isn’t included to force him to do any more things that he isn’t inclined to do. He’s already pushed his luck right up to the breaking point - his luck has flirted with the breaking point, tossed it a couple of winks and bought a drink and perhaps indicated a nice shadowed corner where it and the breaking point might retreat and enjoy each other’s company. From past experience, he is now rapidly approaching the portion of the night where his luck says something stupid, and the breaking point slaps the expression clean off it's face before storming away in a huff.

He’s somewhat lost the thread of the metaphor by the time he notices that the witcher is watching him.

“Why would you care why I drank it?”

He sounds as though he genuinely doesn’t know - not curious, exactly, because Jaskier gets the sense that deep down the witcher isn’t sure he _ wants _ to know the answer to his own question. It’s such a strange thing to realise - that this man who unquestionably saved Jaskier’s life wouldn’t understand why it might be distressing for him to have to stand back and watch him die.

Nevermind that Jaskier had, not too long ago in the grand scheme of things, considered precisely that course of action. He could hardly have been expected to make rational decisions under the extenuating circumstances of hauling a heavily-bleeding witcher from the scene of Jaskier’s crime, and the gruesome demise of two ghouls. He defies anyone to be in the right frame of mind for making any sort of choice in his place.

Except Shani, he thinks, shifting uncomfortably under the witcher’s stare and noting the way her eyes narrow in response. No doubt she would thrive under such stressful conditions.

The point, he reminds himself, the  _ point _ is that the witcher doesn’t appear to have realised that Jaskier would really prefer him to be something other than dead. He doesn’t much care for paying off his debts - if the landlord hadn’t come knocking all those months ago, he would have quite deliberately made certain to never offer the man a single coin - and so he doesn’t feel as though he  _ needs  _ to repay the witcher for saving him.

But, Jaskier thinks with muted alarm, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t  _ want  _ to.

“What good is a witcher corpse?” Jaskier asks in reply. The witcher opens his mouth like he has an answer prepared at all times for just such a question, and Jaskier makes a point of raising his voice to drown out whatever it is he’s planning to say. He isn’t going to touch that with a ten-foot barge pole, no sir, no thank you  _ very  _ much. “If your little concoction had killed you, who would the helpless people of Oxenfurt turn to the next time we’re beset on all sides by vicious creatures of the night? Do you expect me to defend myself with naught but a shovel and my own two hands? Surely you are too good a man, too honourable a man to allow such a thing.”

“Witcher corpse is good for selling.” The witcher purposefully ignores the pontificating in favour of just answering the posited question, and Jaskier schools his face into something guileless that he knows hasn’t fooled a soul since he reached double figures. “Lots of good ingredients for potions. Lots of potential chaos. Bounties out on some of us. Lots of money to be made off a dead witcher.”

“That’s bleak,” Shani comments, squinting as she threads a fine loop of material through a needle.

“Realistic,” the witcher says, bleakly.

“And yet,” Jaskier says, gesturing grandly around the room just as Shani pushes the needle through the witcher’s muscle - he grunts, but otherwise gives no indication he’s even noticed. Jaskier isn’t sure if his pain tolerance is high enough that this hardly registers to him; that he’s already in enough pain that a needle prick makes no difference to him; or if he’s simply lost so much blood that he no longer has any feeling at all. The witcher doesn’t look away from him. “Here we are.”

Shani snorts.

“Yes, here we are, when some of us should be in bed,” she mutters, and then falls silent, the tip of her tongue held between her teeth as she concentrates. Her movements are quick, and practiced, and she pauses between stitching the muscle and the skin to change her thread. The witcher frowns, but doesn’t comment.

Jaskier wonders if he’s ever done more for his wounds than simply drink that gods-awful potion and grit his teeth until it closes on its own.

“Let’s not lie to ourselves Shani dearest, you and I both know that this close to the end of term you survive solely off of frustration, stubbornness, and undergraduate tears. Sleep doesn’t factor into it,” he says. Surprise flits across the witcher’s expression.

“You’re a teacher?” The witcher asks. He breathes deeply as Shani finishes tying her final knot, something that Jaskier thinks might be a sigh of relief, buried beneath layers of stoic repression. She dumps her needle and threads into a bowl and makes a see-saw motion with one bloody hand.

“A teaching assistant, officially, but given how little effort some of the tenured professors put in; yes,” she says, wiping cursorily at the fresh ooze of blood where she had stitched. The witcher lifts a hand to feel the line of sutures, only to have it slapped away. 

Jaskier can’t help the laugh that creeps its way up his throat at the expression on the witcher’s face. There’s no comparison that can truly come close, he thinks, apart from that of a scolded pup; bewildered and shocked and perhaps the tiniest bit hurt.

“It’ll go bad if you fuss at it too much,” Shani says - Jaskier finds that he doubts that very much, and judging by the scowl that overtakes the witcher’s pale mouth, they are for once in perfect agreement. Despite his misgivings, though, the witcher does lower his hand in favour of gently rolling his shoulder to test the ease of movement. Apparently happy with what he finds, some of the lines around his eyes finally ease, giving way to a face that appears much younger than Jaskier had previously assumed. 

The white hair and perpetual solemnity had tricked Jaskier into thinking that the witcher was, if not an  _ old _ man, then certainly not a young one. Now, though, wrapped in the muted light of Shani’s home and struggling to push his arms through the correct holes of his shirt, he looks barely older than Jaskier himself.

Of course, Jaskier knows better than to assume that that means anything at all. He has heard all manner of fanciful tales that say a witcher is carved from living stone and so cannot age - unlikely, given the blood that still coats Jaskier’s fingers - or that they are kept youthful by the life force of the children they steal away that never go on to become witchers themselves. Having now met exactly one witcher in his lifetime, Jaskier thinks himself enough of an expert on the topic to say that that is utter horseshit, but that doesn’t mean that the witcher has aged the same way as a human man. For all Jaskier knows, he could as easily be in his thirties as in his three hundred and thirties.

Jaskier is inclined to think that he must be older than he appears, if only because he hopes that the scars that litter his flesh have been accumulated over more than a century. He can’t imagine the kind of life the witcher must lead if not.

Well - probably a great deal like the night he has just witnessed, repeated over and over without respite. 

The thought makes him wince, something that doesn’t go unnoticed by either Shani or the witcher.

“You should rest,” Shani tells him, manhandling him out of the door and down the corridor towards her room. He has enough presence of mind to bat his lashes at her when she shoves him towards the narrow cot she has the gall to call her bed, and though she does laugh at him - as he’d known she would - it is gentle.

“What about you?” He asks - her, and the witcher that he can now see hovering in the doorway. It wouldn’t be quite right to say that he looks  _ uncomfortable,  _ Jaskier thinks, but he is also certainly lacking the self-assuredness that had been present at the cemetery. Jaskier can respect a man who lives for his work, although he doesn’t think it’s really fair for a man to live for a work that will likely turn around one day soon and kill him.

The witcher shrugs tightly - one shoulder definitely moves more than the other, Jaskier notes with mingled amusement and concern.

“Still need to finish the contract,” he says. “Can’t just leave the ghouls in the open to rot. Bad for business.”

Jaskier opens his mouth around a retort that will be pithy and delightful enough to entertain even the witcher, and is beaten to the punch by Shani, whose eyebrows are becoming rather closely acquainted with her hairline.

“I’m sorry, did you say  _ ghoul?”  _ She asks. She sounds much calmer than Jaskier had, in her place, but then again she is safe and warm indoors, without the perpetual fear of a passer-by stumbling upon her illicit activities. That, and the fact that the threat has already been handily dealt with must do wonders for the nerves.

_ “Ghouls.  _ Plural,” Jaskier says, taking entirely too much pleasure in the way the witcher frowns at him for stealing the words out of his mouth.

“That isn’t better, Jaskier,” she sighs, rubbing at her forehead and leaving a smear of the witcher’s blood behind. Spitefully, Jaskier keeps this information to himself.

“Just - stay here. Get some sleep. And you -” she rounds on the witcher and jabs a finger into his chest. Having been on the receiving end of just such a jab many times, Jaskier is impressed by how little he flinches “- have lost far too much blood, even for a witcher. Drink something that isn’t your death potion, and try not to strain yourself. Jaskier, which cemetery were you in?”

It takes a moment to gather his thoughts - now that the excitement of the night has drained away, he feels hollowed out, and far too shaky to be healthy. He would ask Shani about it, if she weren’t already doing so much for him.

“The Westgate cemetery, just past the arch by that particularly mouldy drinking hole,” he says, and she nods decisively. “But Shani, there are two ghoul bodies, and the casket I dug up, I don’t think -”

“No, you don’t,” she says pleasantly, which would be a great deal more hurtful if she didn’t have months of evidence on her side. The witcher watches as she ducks past him out into the hallway, and doesn’t make a single move to stop her. Clever man. “Let  _ me _ think while you sleep. You’re hardly the only morally bankrupt friend I’ve made in this damn city. I’ll manage.”

Morally -  _ morally bankrupt? _ Jaskier knows he’s hardly a paragon of virtue - indeed, even the sight of him is enough to make the priestesses of multiple temples throw up their hands in despair - but it isn’t as though he is utterly devoid of integrity or scruples.

The witcher has the audacity to laugh - or at least, to huff a heavier breath in such a way that Jaskier just  _ knows _ he’s laughing at him. He can’t quite muster up a glare at him, but with any luck those enhanced witcher senses will work to get the irritation across. Whether it works or not, the witcher turns to him and raises a brow.

Shani takes the opportunity to vanish down the hall; Jaskier takes the opportunity to scowl and twist himself up in her sheets, untucking them and mashing her pillow into a more comfortable shape. The witcher watches him all the while, with that amused tilt to his mouth and the lines around his eyes so soft that they almost disappear in the dim light.

“Well you heard her,” Jaskier says, voice muffled by the mouthful of pillow enough to annoy him but not enough to convince him to move from the comfortable position he has found himself in. Knowing that Shani is prepared to take care of the mess that today has turned into has worked wonders to let the last of his fear melt away, leaving only a marrow-deep tiredness in its wake. "Find something to replace all of that blood that's now coating the streets of Oxenfurt, and - I don't know, have a nap or something. Do witchers sleep? Relax, if not, pull up a chair, read a nice book. I think Shani only has medical texts lying around, but you seem the mad sort who would find that nice. Perhaps in the morning, you could -"

"Jaskier," the witcher interrupts, and there is a moment of confusion as Jaskier wonders if part of his witchery powers is mind-reading, before he realises that the witcher must have been paying attention to what Shani was saying. "I'm fine. The potion will replenish what I've lost. And witchers do sleep, but I won't need to tonight. Your friend did a good job. Thank you, for - bringing me here. Most wouldn't."

Shani isn't here to appreciate the compliment, so Jaskier preens enough for the both of them, before the rest of the witcher's words trickle through. 

"Not only would that be their loss, but I think it says rather more about the sorry state of humanity than it does about you or I, my friend," he sniffs, indignant on the witcher's behalf. 

The witcher smiles at that, just a little.

"Maybe," he acknowledges, and steps further into the room. His eyes flick from the window - far too stiff to open at the best of times, and with a great deal too much metal between the panes to make leaping out of it a possibility - to the uneven floorboards, to the damp-stained ceiling. His head sways back and forth like a hunting dog, following a trail only he can see, or smell, or hear.

Eventually, though, he must find - or not find - whatever it is he's searching for, and so he settles himself on the rickety chair that Shani for some reason refuses to be parted with. It creaks alarmingly beneath his weight, but doesn't splinter, even as he shifts in a futile effort to get comfortable. Jaskier considers telling him that it's a hopeless pursuit, but the witcher stills before he has a chance. Shani hadn't left them with a candle, and although there is some light filtering through the window, it's barely enough to make out more than the witcher's outline and the cat-like shine of his eyes.

"You know," Jaskier says after a moment, and waits to speak again until he is sure that the witcher is looking at him, even in the gloom. "I probably would have died tonight, if it weren't for you."

The witcher hums lightly.

"Yes, I did know that," he replies, and if it weren't for the humourous tilt of his mouth, Jaskier might have thought that he sounded bemused.

"And there's a good chance that you would have died without me to bring you here," Jaskier continues, and this time the answering hum sounds rather more disbelieving.

"Doubtful," the witcher says.

"But! More importantly! If I'm to continue my line of work, I can only assume that this is a problem that's going to persist; would that be a fair assessment?" Jaskier hears the chair creak as the witcher shifts his weight again, and the best of his heart is loud in his ears in the time it takes the witcher to feel out the shape of his words. 

"Maybe not right away, but - yes. Eventually more necrophages will show up, if they think they can get an easy meal out of it. And then some other things might follow them. Worse things." Jaskier shudders - there's something cold in the witcher's stark words, something haunted. He wonders what other things might follow in the wake of a nearly-fresh body, and then promptly stops himself from wondering any more.

"Which is why I think it would be a good idea if you stuck around, at least for a while. You still have that favour to collect, don't you? And I can offer you a portion of my pay for each body! You'll have a steady stream of contracts, and I'll have a guarantee that no nasty beasties of the night will murder me cruelly before my time!" 

"You're not worried that I'll murder you cruelly before your time?"

Jaskier snorts, chuckling quietly to himself, and it takes him a minute to realise that there is no sound at all coming from the other side of the room.

"You - oh, you were being serious that time?" The witcher blinks, slow, and placid, and as far from murderous as he has been for all of the time Jaskier has known him. Granted, that's only a few hours now, even when rounding up, but the point stands. "If you wanted me to meet a grisly end, all you would've had to do was be a bit slower, witcher. I can't imagine you'd turn around and slit my throat after putting in all that effort to keep me alive."

The witcher smiles at that, a real smile, wide and open. It isn't a particularly nice expression, but Jaskier finds himself softening in the face of it nonetheless.

"You're assuming a lot of things about me. About witchers."

Jaskier raises a brow.

"But am I wrong?"

The smile drips away like hot wax. The witcher looks away, and doesn't answer, which for Jaskier is answer enough.

"So I'm to take all of this as a 'no, I won't devote my time and energy to helping the advancement of medical sciences and furthering the knowledge of the poor, underprivileged students that toil and work their fingers to the bone all for the sake of healing the good people of the Continent', am I?" 

"It wouldn't be good for either of us if a witcher was caught helping you steal bodies. Especially as it’s me," the witcher says; there's something in his voice that walks the line of condescension, and is saved only by his gentle sigh. "In the morning I'll teach you how to tell when your… work has attracted a necrophage. Shouldn't need a witcher again, if you're careful."

Jaskier burrows a little deeper beneath his blankets and considers this.

"Oh very well. But I will expect you to pay a visit in a few months' time, just to make sure. It would be a dreadful loss for the university - and the arts! - if I were to perish because I hadn't managed to memorise all of your instructions. Not to mention a weight on your conscience fit to drag you down to the depths of despair."

"I'd manage," the witcher says. "But I'll pass back this way in a few months anyway. I'll stop by then."

“Good enough, I suppose,” Jaskier decides, and lets his eyes drift shut.

“Get some sleep, Jaskier. It’ll be dawn soon.”

“Rest well, witcher.”

There’s silence apart from the gentle whistle of Jaskier’s deepening breaths - but then, on the edge of a dream, he hears -

“Geralt. My name is Geralt.”

\- and sleep overtakes him before he can wonder why the name sounds familiar.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this with a single joke in mind that I couldn't even work into the fic, so here it is:  
> Jaskier: graverobber? I beg your fucking pardon, we go by ressurrectionists now  
> Geralt: that's something different Jaskier. How many people have you ACTUALLY resurrected?  
> Jaskier: including the guy I thought was dead but was actually just sleeping and drunkenly gave mouth-to-mouth?  
> Geralt: sure  
> Jaskier: ... one


End file.
